es as
members of independent noble families. Slowly, then, the family names of
later China began to develop, but it took many centuries until, at the
time of the Han Dynasty, all citizens (slaves excluded) had accepted
family names. Then, reversely, families grew again into new clans.
Thus we have this picture of the early Chou state: the imperial central
power established in Shensi, near the present Sian; over a thousand
feudal states, great and small, often consisting only of a small
garrison, or sometimes a more considerable one, with the former
chieftain as feudal lord over it. Around these garrisons the old
population lived on, in the north the Shang population, farther east and
south various other peoples and cultures. The conquerors' garrisons were
like islands in a sea. Most of them formed new towns, walled, with a
rectangular plan and central crossroads, similar to the European towns
subsequently formed out of Roman encampments. This town plan has been
preserved to the present day.
This upper class in the garrisons formed the nobility; it was sharply
divided from the indigenous population around the towns. The conquerors
called the population "the black-haired people", and themselves "the
hundred families". The rest of the town populations consisted often of
urban Shang people: Shang noble families together with their bondsmen
and serfs had been given to Chou fiefholders. Such forced resettlements
of whole populations have remained typical even for much later periods.
By this method new cities were provided with urban, refined people and,
most important, with skilled craftsmen and businessmen who assisted in
building the cities and in keeping them alive. Some scholars believe
that many resettled Shang urbanites either were or became businessmen;
incidentally, the same word "Shang" means "merchant", up to the present
time. The people of the Shang capital lived on and even attempted a
revolt in collaboration with some Chou people. The Chou rulers
suppressed this revolt, and then transferred a large part of this
population to Loyang. They were settled there in a separate community,
and vestiges of the Shang population were still to be found there in the
fifth century A.D.: they were entirely impoverished potters, still
making vessels in the old style.
3 _Fusion of Chou and Shang_
The conquerors brought with them, for their own purposes to begin with,
their rigid patriarchate in the family system and thei
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